Final Slideshow posted here

Thanks for a wonderful closing ceremony, Leslie! We will miss our students. If you want to see the slideshow with all of the great pictures, click on the link below. 

Final Slideshow

The travel before come to UCLA

by Quick

About one month ago, I came to the USA. The place which I first is San Francisco, and we lived just behind the Pier 2. And in our room I can see the ocean and there were many private yacht. After we settle down, we went to the Pier 39---the most famous pier. At the second day I went to the Golden Gate Bridge. And before that, I went to the Oakland Bay Bridge, it is a huge bridge, much longer than the Golden Gate Bridge, I think the only reason that Golden Gate Bridge is more famous is because it was the first cable stayed bridge in the world. And when we plant to leave we saw a man who catch a huge fish and I even took a picture for him.

After that we went to the Lombard street, I think everybody knows this place, in China we called it” the street have nine turn and full of flower.” the whole street is really beautiful and it is full of flowers, and have many turns. Though the road is not very long but very high so that the fall is really huge and this why it is interesting. I still know that California is also famous for the wine manor, so after that we went to a huge manor, at first i saw many grapes and than we went into a house just like a church, and many people inside are tasted the wine, but I’m still not reach 21 years old even though i wants to tasted.

And next day we went to the Yosemite, it is a national nature park, we spent a long time on the way to Yosemite and we just stayed there for only one days and I saw many people are driving with their motor homes some are lived with their tents, and these guys could swim in the river or row a little boat, some of the tourist looks like they are going to climb mountains and they looks very profession because they always don’t wearing clothes but took a long rope. When I was on the shuttle bus I met many people who looks same age as me, we had a conversation he said he come here with the summer camp and he always stay here for one week and still one week last, he just lived in the tent, I think this kind of life is really fancy and free, you could also meet many different people who is from every where.

Then we went to a famous beach it called “17 mile.” there was a wooden road just beside the beach, and I also saw many people were playing golf and one of my relative who is lived here for a long time told me that here’s golf is really expensive and you should make an appointment before you go to play, but the people who lived inside is free to play the golf but these kind of house’s price is really really expensive, and they have a big island which is full of bird so that it name is “bird island.”

Next day i came to LA, begin my summer school life.

May day holiday

by James Y.                                                                                                                                                                                                       
This May Day holiday I went to Tokyo, Japan. Two days before the holiday I got a fever so I almost didn’t go there. Simply at the day I visit to Japan the fever brought down. Their culture have big difference with China’s. In my opinion Japan is much better than Beijing. Like polite, food quality, environment... When I  arrive to Japan is April 30th evening 11 o’clock. The 4 hours’ air travel made me dizzy, so after I checked in to hotel I took a shower, then slept.

The food that most impressed me in Japan is sushi, takoyaki, tempura and the bento. For sure we can eat them in Beijing, they taste much better than the Japanese restaurant in Beijing. My favorite place in Japan is Akihabara, there also is a dangerous place for my wallet. There are stores for games and high-tech products. 4 days in Japan I lost control at least 3 times because I wanted to buy so much.
  
 I have been to two tourist attractions in these four days. Two of them are Sony’s headquarters and “Tokyo sky tree”. Because I love technology, I couldn’t wait to go there. Sony’s headquarters in Tokyo is a huge building we can see from far away. The most interesting part in this building is they put all the old technologies in show case, like the first sony MP3, laptop and TV. They also have the new technology that are testing but didn’t sell yet, like the TV without the screen. This isn’t a projector because the picture are floating in the air.

Before, the highest point in the Tokyo was the Tokyo tower. Now it is a new building that was just finished few years ago called “Tokyo sky tree”. The tower is 634 meters high. At night the tower would show different colors.This is my whole journey of Japan in May Day holiday, I hope before I graduate I can have another chance to go to Japan.

The Unexpected

by Yuki

Real Madrid is one of the most famous soccer clubs in the world. They won the UEFA Champions League in May this year, and achieved “La Decima”, the first team to win the competition ten times. UEFA Champions League is the most prestigious tournament in football. If you won this competition, it means that the club is No.1 in Europe.

I did know that the players of Real Madrid are in the U.S for Pre-season tour. But I didn’t know that they are having a practice at UCLA. Therefore, when I first heard from Nicholas, “I heard the players of Real Madrid are here today”, I have to digest a moment to understand what he just said. I thought he went mad because of his homework, and telling me a bad joke. However, it was true. They come to UCLA every year in summer, and practice.

The happiest thing was an autograph from Gareth Bale. I also took some pictures of other players, but autograph is special. He is one of the top players in the world. It was unbelievable that he was standing in front of me, and gave me a sign. He is my favorite player before he moved to Real Madrid. 

He moved from Tottenham Hotspur to Real Madrid last September. The transfer price was expected to be over €100 million, breaking the world transfer record. It means that he is the most valuable player in the world.

This is my one of the best experience in UCLA. I want to come back to UCLA just to meet the players again.

LACMA

by Mindy

I’ve been to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, also called the LACMA museum. I really appreciate the artwork there and there were two pieces of artwork caught my attention. Then, I started to search for some information online in order to know the artist better and the symbolization for the piece of artwork.

“Cliff Dwellers,” which captured the view of the Lower East Side in New York, was painted by George Bellows in 1913. As George Bellows was famous for his bold portraits of life in New York City, this artwork definitely froze the street scene with a result from a flood of immigration. As you can see, the street was full of people and it was so crowded that the bus was stuck in the crowd. To me, when I first looked at this artwork, first thing to get in my mind is that the place was so crowded and their house might be really small that didn’t have a place hang their cloth.

“History As A Planter” was made by Edward Kienholz, who was an American installation artist and assemblage sculptor, in 1961. Most of Kienholz’s work highly critical of modern life and this artwork was no exception. There was lots of symbolization in this artwork and it was especially about history of Jewish struggle. The oven symbolized the Holocaust, which was genocide that German killed many Jews; the mannequin feet, placed in the oven, were symbolic for Jews that were incinerated in the Concentration Camps; the plants on the top of the oven were a kind special species called “Wandering Jew,” which can still be alive with nearly no attention. It represented Jews’ abilities to survive and it was placed above the oven maybe was a symbolization that Jewish people overcame the World War II. I felt really uncomfortable when I first looked at the artwork, but after these searching online, I am able to know what the artist want to show the audience and think that he was such a great artist that he had hidden so many thoughts in the piece of art work. 

Also, I was wondering why didn’t he paint it at first, but I suddenly realized the reason after knowing these symbolization. The door can be closed or opened, in my opinion, while the door is open, meaning that the Jews remember their history and all the persecution they been through; while the door is closed, meaning that the Jews have already overcame their tragedy.

Visiting the LACMA museum is a really great experience and I learned a lot from this visit. Next time, when I am visiting another museum, I will try to learn more deeply about an artwork.

The Cafeteria of UCLA

by Celina

 

I love food, so whether I like the school or not depends on the food it serves.  UCLA cafeteria looks neat and serves delicious food. Even though American food contains high calories, I can’t stop eating.

The first meal we had was when the day we first arrived at UCLA. It was almost seven o’clock in the evening. Our counselors told us to put our stuff in the lockers. Then, we used our room keys to access the cafeteria. The waitress at front desk is always friendly and cute. She says hi to every person all the time. This huge cafeteria amazed me. It’s clean and has a great variety of food. All kinds of people, such as summer sessions students, staff members, young kids, were lining up for food.

I took two slices of pizza and grabbed a glass of apple juice. The size of pizza was way larger than the kind that my school serves, and it tasted like Papa John’s pizza.

The following 3 weeks, I’ve tried food from each section of the cafeteria. UCLA’s salad and spaghetti taste fantastic. At salad bar, it provides all kinds of vegetables and sauces. In china, we usually have fried veggies instead of raw vegetables. There are always a lot of people waiting for spaghetti. Therefore, I’ve only tried it twice. In china, we also have a lot of western restaurants, which have spaghetti. But I think UCLA cafeteria has better spaghetti than those restaurants have. My favorite kind of spaghetti here is lasagna. It has layers of noodle, which are packed with tomato sauce. However, I feel so guilty when I finish the food, because it’s really fat.

 

 

Since I became heavier during the first two weeks, I don’t have dinner anymore in my last week here. So I always eat a lot for breakfast. I always grab a bowl of cereal and scrambled egg with bacon and potatoes every morning. I normally don’t eat cereal in China because Chinese milk tastes horrible. The milk here tastes fresh and smells good. In China, I always go out and have western breakfast with my friends at Element Fresh, which is a really popular western restaurant.  At UCLA, I feel like I have Element Fresh’s food every morning for free. I just love this cafeteria so much.

Even though I miss my hometown a lot, I don’t want to leave here, because the cafeteria has really good food. I will miss UCLA and the food here after I get back to China.

Bad Luck

by Celina                                                            

This is my first time in Los Angeles. I took an airplane from Shanghai to hear by myself.  Even though I’ve suffered ten hours sitting on an extremely uncomfortable seat, I was looking forward to my three weeks in UCLA. 

I’ve learnt a lot in these three weeks. Unfortunately, I fell to the ground twice and both my phone and SIM card are broken. Some of us went to Grove on our first weekend here. On our way back to UCLA, I was tripped by something. I used my knees to support my body. But still my left knee was injured and it was bleeding. In the next following 3 days, I could not take a shower like others do. 

Something horrible happened on me on my second week here, my phone was broken. I went to the mobile store, but the technician could not repair it. Therefore, I spent half of my money on buying a new phone. This reminds me of my experience back in London, 2011 when I was only 15. My phone was dead on the first day I arrived in London. I felt helpless and lonely because I was alone in a foreign environment. 

After I bought a new phone, my SIM could not connect to the server. To put it simply, I could only use my new phone as a itouch.  Luckily, it started to work again a day later. 

A week after I fell to the ground, I fell again on the downhill. I was almost late to study hall. So I was running. Unbelievably, my scab from last week cracked.  My wound was almost recovered, but now it became what it looked like in the first place. 

I hope my last week here will be peaceful and safe. Also, I wish I am not going to fall again this Sunday!

The Weather in LA

by Mindy

The weather in Los Angles is totally different from what we have in Taiwan. While in the summer, it is usually hot and dry in Los Angeles, it is humid and we have many typhoons in Taiwan.

The sun is always shining, the sky is blue, and there are barely any clouds in the sky. These were some thoughts about the weather when I first came here, but during my stay in UCLA in the past two weeks I have a different thought about it. There is something I really can’t get used to, the drop of the temperature at night. When I want to go out in a hot summer day in Taiwan, I don’t need to bring a jacket. However, during my stay in Los Angeles, I will need to bring my jacket with me whenever go out for some activities because not only the night time but also in the shade is really cold.
 

In Taiwan, instead of bringing a jacket whenever leaving the room, we should bring an umbrella everywhere. No matter how good the weather may be in the morning, the weather can suddenly change in the afternoon. It will start pouring and this is what we should we aware of, afternoon thunderstorms. Nevertheless, afternoon thundershowers aren’t the worst part in summer, typhoons are. Though we are happy that may be able to get a day off, typhoons cause lots of damage, such as landslides. Every time when there is a typhoon strike Taiwan, people living in the mountains must leave their hometown or else the landslides might bury them. Last week, when the Typhoon Matmo occurred, something worse even happened. An airplane crashed because of the air turbulence after the typhoon and caused 48 people dead and 10 people injured.
 

I really like the weather in summer here in Los Angeles. Though it is a little bit too hot, it is dry so that I won’t sweat easily.

LA Thinks Green

by Dania

I have been fortunate enough to have parents that love to travel, and therefore had visited several countries. From every different country that I visit, there is a tradition or custom that I always want to borrow from that place and bring it to my own hometown. Little did I know, however, that even four hours away from where I come from, there would also be different customs to learn from.

While visiting LA, I noticed how grocery shopping in this city is not quite the same as in my hometown, Calexico. In Calexico, all plastic bags are free at the purchase of the grocery store’s products. In LA, however, each paper bag ranges from ten to fifteen cents. As a result, it has become a habit for most people in the city to take their own bags when shopping. I have seen how this practice was common for people in San Francisco, but was surprised to see it here as well. I believe that it is great for the city to do this because it promotes a very easy way for the people to benefit the environment. At the same time, it may start a concern in others about measuring their consumption. Now, I hope that soon this becomes a habit also in my hometown so that we can become part of the ecologist movement as well.

We should all learn from good habits, and I believe that LA is a great role model by taking their own bags when they go grocery shopping. Perhaps it may take a while for my hometown to set a price on plastic bags as well; for the meantime, I know for sure that I will start going grocery shopping with my own bags as well.

Native Tourist

by Dania

I have never experienced what being a tourist in Los Angeles means. Of course, I have visited Disneyland, but I have always thought of Disneyland as my home already.  I was born in Mexico, and currently reside in the United States four hours away from Los Angeles. When people talk about Los Angeles, I always think they are talking about my hometown even though I live hours away. For this past weeks, however, I have learned about how all these years I have been unconscious about what Los Angeles is all about. 

As I arrived to the city, everything seem pretty common to me: same highways, same food places, same climate, and as a whole same culture. However, the more time that I stay here, the more things I know about what I did not know. 

During the first week, I learned about what a food truck experience is all about. The first thing that came into my mind when I heard about food trucks was a truck where people sold hot dogs, corn dogs, or ice creams. However, when I arrived I was surprised to see that the whole stereotype that I had about people selling from food trucks limiting their product to fast food was false. I have seen many food trucks before, yet this was the first time that I saw actual food dishes such as pasta and grilled meat served from a truck. It was also different from what I was familiarized because it was new for me to see several trucks at a single time specifically parked on a lot as a food court. 

Throughout my stay in UCLA, I started to value all of the different treasures that I have nearby home and that I have not actually explored. I believe that it just becomes so easy for us to overlook what is closer just because of how used we are to it.  Exploring even what we think we know is the lesson that UCLA gave me.

Hey, how are you doing?

By Sarah

Being an international student here in the US, it is sometimes very hard to get used to the American etiquette. I, as an international student here at UCLA, have faced this problem many times. One of these problems is the American way of greeting a stranger.

Almost everyday I get asked the question, “How are you?” or “How are you doing?” In the beginning I always got really confused when a stranger would ask me this question. In my home country, Holland, it is normal to ask this questions to friends or family, and you are expected to give an extended answer telling the person what you’ve been up to and how you are feeling. Was I supposed to do this to a stranger?! My friend Dania, who goes to an American school, told me that this is very common in the US. You are supposed to answer, “Good” or “Fine,” and ask the person how they are, to which they will also respond, “Good.” In the US this expression just means, “Hi,” and does not imply that the person is interested in your personal life.

The article on the website Voice of America states, “In general, people from the U.S. do not like to express their emotions to strangers or acquaintances. They prefer to put on a permanent smile and mask their other feelings.” In America, people are very individualistic, and don’t usually like to get close to people. Thus, they use expressions that might have a deeper meaning in other cultures quite casually.

The subtleness of phrases like “how are you?” can be difficult to understand for non-native speakers, but one of the beauties of studying or living abroad is learning and understanding the culture of the host country a little bit better. To me, I’m not only learning to speak the language, but also the culture. 

The Opposite Lifestyles

by Sarah

Before coming to America, I had always known the stereotype of its big portions. I was told to never order a large in a restaurant, maybe a medium if you were really hungry. Also, all the ‘good’ food, was supposedly from America; burgers, mac and cheese, chocolate chip cookies and hotdogs. However, after coming here I’ve also seen the different side of the Los Angeles lifestyle. In every restaurant the amount of calories is mentioned, there is always a light option available and on every corner of a street you will find either a juice store or a gym. 

Every morning and evening we eat breakfast and dinner in the dining hall. This is exactly like I expected it to be. For breakfast you can get doughnuts, muffins, tater tots, pancakes and waffles. For dinner you can get burgers, hotdogs, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza and French fries. To me, this is so typically American. However, for me, this is horrible. I really try to eat healthy and when you are exposed to these types of food twice a day, it can be hard to contain yourself.

That’s why I was so happy to find out about the ‘other lifestyle’ that is also prominent and big in Los Angeles: the healthy lifestyle. On every menu the amount of calories is always mentioned and it is very easy to get access to the nearest gym. I also found many healthy foods in supermarkets I had heard about and now finally have seen, like the "superfoods."
 

I really like it that we have such diversity in Los Angeles. There is something for everyone. And if you don’t have such a particular preference in very unhealthy or healthy, there are always the ‘normal’ options. This is definitely one of my most favorite things for me about Los Angeles. 

Japanese Food in LA

 by Jonathan

The day I arrived at LA, I was really excited because it has been about 12 years since last time I came here. My Uncle and Aunt were all very enthusiastic to bring my mom and I to try their favorite restaurant in little Tokyo. It is a Japanese skewers restaurant called Kokekokko. The chef who is also the boss was a really humorous Japanese man. His restaurant is only open at night and also he makes the special order for special customers, and I was glad that my uncle was one of them.

What I like about his food is that we don’t need to eat them with dressing or soy sauce and it still tasted extremely delicious. Moreover, one of his secret menus, Japanese cold noodles, will be the best that I have ever tried it before. The noodles are really chewy, won’t be too soft or too hard to bite. Also the sauce with the noodles just stimulates my sense of taste. The Japanese chef said that it’s their homemade special sauce that you won’t be able to taste anywhere else. I would like to try those foods again before I leave LA, or I will regret.

Santa Monica Beach

SANTA MONICA by CARINA

I went to Santa Monica Beach on July 25, 2014. Although the sun was shinning bright, I couldn’t feel the hotness. It had some wind blew. It is the best weather for going to the beach. 

 When I arrived there, I walked along the beach to go to the pier. I walked slowly to enjoy the beautiful view. There were so many people. While walking towards the head of the pier, I saw some people got their camera to take pictures, some people bought food to eat, some people sold their products etc. I took a picture before the road side, it said “Santa Monica 66”. After it, there is a Pacific Park which is a small Disneyland. People were riding on the roller coaster, riding the Ferris Wheel, holding dolls. It is a fun place for teenages. I saw people fishing. I sat on the bench on the pier. It was really cool. I could see my chicken skin. The temperature between the beach and the pier was a huge difference. I decided to take a rest in the bench. Suddenly, the people talked so loud and I was awaked. I saw a sea lion swimming in the ocean, it was so lovely. All people took their phones out to take a photo. 

After taking a rest, I went to the beach to meet the other. The Shimmering sunlight made the sand sparkle like a thousand tiny jewels. I went towards the sea to wash my feet. The water was so cool. However, I hated the seaweed sticking on my feet. It was so uncomfortable. I could hear waves crashing against the shore and the wind blowing slightly. Next, I went playing  frisbee. This was the first time I played it and I was not good at it. 

In Hong Kong, I do not have time to go to the beach have fun with my friends as I was very busy everyday about my academic. Therefore, I had a great time in the beach. I enjoyed a lot. This is what my life should be.